Commonwealth CS thanks and smoke

[Kiwikkiwik]

I noticed that the British early CS tanks have had their smoke shells replaced with HE.

This is a critically important alteration because one of the main reasons British armour did so poorly against the Germans early in the war was precisely because their tanks had no HE ammunition to engage German AT with. In game this difficulty has been removed by replacing all the smoke shells with HE. Where's the fun in that?

Wpn 067 "3.7in Howitzer"
Fired both smoke and HE rounds but early in the war mostly/only smoke shells were loaded into the tanks that carried this weapon, units 134 'A9 CS', 135 'A10 CS' and 136 'A13 CS'

Brown's Book 'British cruiser tanks A9 & A10' gives loadout of 50 shells for these CS vehicles. However, Jentz in his book 'Tank combat in North Africa' gives the loadout for these two tanks as 36 smoke 4 HE. 40 is the official 'standard' loadout. The important thing to note here is whatever the total number of rounds carried was, only a handful, or none (depending on reference) were ever HE, which can be verified at any number of sources.
From
http://www.desertrats.org.uk/equiparmourtanks.htm
"A HE shell was also produced, but was in short supply in North Africa. When 3 RTR went to Calais in May 1940, they got there only to find that the HE shells, for their A9 CS tanks, had been left on the dockside in the UK"

Wpn 035 "3in CSH"
When weapon 035 appears in unit 029 "Matilda II-CS" the same smokey doctrine existed as for the 3.7 Howitzer, and this tank should have the same tiny HE loadout or none.
In his book 'British Battle Tanks' Fletcher comments "but this weapon (Matilda CS) was only required to fire smoke rounds as cover for the gun tanks so it could hardly be regarded as a major adjunct to the assault" which is exactly the opposite to what the game has with the vehicle having 38 HE.

The proportion of HE in CS tanks had increased by the time crusaders appeared. According to Knight 'A15 Cruiser Mk VI Crusader tank a technical history', late 3" CS tank ammunition (unit 009 Crusader I-CS and 011 Crusader II-CS) loadout became 2 smoke for every 1 HE. Later in the book knight gives 3" crusaders loadout as 25 HE, 40 smoke. Game has 40 HE, should be 40 smoke and 20-25 HE. See also
http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.p...anks&Itemid=56
which gives 63 3" shells for crusaders.

Besides the extra HE the game also gives the 3" Howitzer nonexistent AP ammunition. 3" howitzer doesn't have an AP shell. UK units that have been mistakenly given 3" AP are 009, 011, 029, 033, 150, 171, 599, 663, 740, 850, 993 and 994. Playing these peculiar UK formations with their historically correct ammunition configuration presents an interesting challenge most players can't take as they are unaware of true historic loadout.

http://www.warwheels.net/images/Stag...Sdatasheet.pdf
Gives UK unit 850 'Staghound MkII' 44 shells game has 40.

[Mobhack]

The CS tanks have always had HE rather than smole since the SSI OOB days

Why?
- to make them useful, as otherwise they would only have no ammo (bar the random dole of smoke) bnecause:

- Smoke is not ammunition in the game, It is an attribute that is randomly handed out as a bonus item to various units on top of any existing ammo on initial creation.

That is why there is no "smoke" item in mobhack, bar the smoke dischargers item.

AP, APCR, HE and HEAT are ammo tyes which may be allocated numbers, there is no smoke ammo field. That should be obvious to anyone who has opened up Mobhack.

- The AP ammo for the CS howitzers also dates from the SSI days. Nobody ever really questioned if there was such a thing for these obscure weapons. It is pretty much useles anyway.

So the CS tanks would have a random number of smoke rounds, as they already do and that would be it. No smoke rounds other than the randomised handout, and no HE or AP. Just the MGs.

The only useful ammo tghey could possibly carry in-game is therefore HE, which did exist in the supply lines, and so it is given to them so they arent totally useless items for game purposes. Just assume that your unit supply officer indented for the stuff, like the 2in mortar HE folks seem to love - that too was something not routinely supplied, but available only on special request (as firing the stuff with only a painted white line on the tube for "sights" is problematical)

The only people who have ever complained about these CS tanks loadouts - is yourself.

(I'm surprised that you haven't complained that some tank carries 55 rounds, but in game it has 55 and 4 additional smoke rounds, shock, horror! - the "extra" 4 rounds come from the random smoke doled out at unit initialisation, not from user-editable ammo in an OOB.)

[Kiwikkiwik]

Ridicule me as much as you like, you are missing an major opportunity to make the game more interesting.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Kiwikkiwik

Ridicule me as much as you like, you are missing an major opportunity to make the game more interesting.

More interesting in what weird sort of way?

As usual - if you want to make your own custom OB with CS tanks having absolutely no assigned AP or HE, and so just the random dole out of smoke for thier unit class - go ahead. Feel free to put them in the mods forum when you are done.

(I may take the AP and replace with HE in the UK and CW OOBS as the HE ammo is quite frankly more useful in-game than those patetic few weak shots of AP. And then of course, some other rivet-counter will turn up a few yeas later and state that they had an SAP round for these things and why dont you have them in the orbat..)